In the field of information search, including Internet search, vertical search, e-commerce related search and similar types of information search. The search assists end users in assessing the quality of information returned to them by an information retrieval system.
In a typical Information Retrieval (IR) system, a user enters queries and receives information that is, hopefully, relevant to the query and to the user. If the information sought is simple and objective the user can quickly ascertain whether it is relevant to the query. On the other hand, if the information sought is not completely objective, is complex, or is not obvious by simply looking at it, then the user is tasked with evaluating the quality of the results at a deeper level, to be convinced of their relevance, correctness and claims.
To facilitate the user's decision-making, an IR system should give the user information to support the results it returns. If the system is only returning specific items, for example web pages or documents, then the support usually consists of returning excerpts from the document that support the query and additional information about the document. In contrast, if the retrieval system handles more intangible information than documents, then it needs to demonstrate relevance by other methods; otherwise the user has no ability to decide about the quality of the results. For a system to support intangible results it needs to collect and generate supporting information and present it to the user in meaningful and useful ways.